The conservative cycle in Europe seems to be coming to an end. Fermín Bouza (Santiago de Compostela, 1946), professor of Sociology, Complutense University, please be assured that France will open the gap of a Europe ruled by the left to relax the current austerity policy imposed by Angela Merkel. Bouza intervened a few days in the Week Galega of Philosophy in A Coruña.
-‘Germany is using the economy as a weapon of war’, says you.
-So, although it’s scary. It was always an economic powerhouse and it needs markets for its products. Germany always had the temptation to occupy Europe and now back to need the physical space and the european commercial for your market. In World War II, expressed it by laying the tanks to the street and, now, managing the markets and the thing that is behind the financial investments to punish countries that do not make adjustments.
– How a hypothetical social democratic government in France, now, and the next year in Germany, it would be a radical change?
-The socialists, which were historically very moderate, now that, little by little, it will return to rule in Europe, will have to be more radical, because if not people will not look at your face. There is a disaffection is so great, especially with the left… The left has been so remarkably wise that has never been able to make their policies, but can no longer be so and, therefore, Hollande will have to make it a policy to have truly left.
– What does that mean?
-Supposed to return to the quiet in the payment of the debt and to relax the stance on the deficit. All life there was a deficit and was paying and managed the debt, is not a new problem; the rush of now are the germans. Why do they have that urgency and transform an endemic problem, and that economists consider normal, something pathological, and go for the countries that do not comply with the urgency of your debts? The germans know that if they press the peripheral countries, they skip, as jumped Greece. Germany uses this pressure as a weapon of war: what the did with the PSOE in power and does it now with the PP. It is not a problem, strictly political, is a German problem.
– Does that not happen with a triumph of the SPD?
-The SPD, the German takes a lot of time saying that you cannot tighten and the market economy and manage the deficit of another way. We have a problem not only with the German conservatives but with Angela Merkel, a lady who grew up in the former East Germany, and who is accustomed to command and control in a society with a very vertical.
-Meanwhile, in Europe, blossoming parties of the ultra-right.
-In Spain, we have the advantage, or the disadvantage, that the extreme right is ambush in the PP and the’ll be controlling, but it is not so in France, for example, while the party of Le Pen will not be the final determinant.
– Does this type of extreme-right parties, sometimes anti-establishment, they are a serious risk?
-You see it coming, and above all be seen in the weakness of the right to hold his own. Dare not to control them and to put forward interests that are very dangerous in situations of crisis like this. There is a serious criticism of these movements, and the PP has had within, in Catalonia, movements racist who immediately found support in parts of the population.
– Is it a favorable time?
-Is an ideal time. The united states is over, you don’t like the european model of authoritarianism, seems to be too theatrical and when you want to make policy very hard to make, but we already know the americans and we’ve learned to live with them. But the fascism or nazism again would be terrible. I don’t want to believe it, although there is some symptom, and the great sign was the Norwegian who killed ninety people.
– Do you believe that Spain will be rescued by Europe?
-You have reason Felipe Gonzalez, if there are rescue to Spain, there will also be rescue France, and other countries would then, with which the euro would fall and would disappear in Europe. The rescue Spanish, in addition, it would be very expensive and the coffers of european are creaking. Brussels will attempt to stop the rescue, and also stop to Merkel. I hope that in a little more than a month is Hollande in power, and the socialists are after a majority in the French Parliament. Then will come the German elections and there will begin the solution. And Spain, after those changes, you will have to approved hopelessly with the rest of Europe at all: you will have to continue running the welfare State, however much you want to pay it off now the PP Government, and shall update the tax burden, which is much lower than the european, and that would allow us to normalize our economy.